Derek Chisora’s trainer on handling a troubled upbringing, tragedy in the ring and his fighter’s best strategy for beating Joseph Parker
When the lights dim at the Manchester Arena on Saturday, and Derek Chisora and Joseph Parker wait in their corners for the first bell, it will be tempting to pay more attention to their trainers as they offer up the final slivers of advice before a fight that both heavyweights desperately need to win. Parker, the former WBO world champion, is hoping to fight again for the title, after he lost to Anthony Joshua in a unification contest in March 2018, and he has hired Andy Lee as his new trainer. The old warhorse Chisora, meanwhile, is 37 and, as his last days in boxing reel towards him, he has called in Buddy McGirt, one of the world’s great trainers, to salvage his career.
Lee is the most intelligent and astute new trainer in British and Irish boxing. He is a former world middleweight champion who left Limerick in 2005, aged 19, to live and work with Emmanuel Steward, one of boxing’s most venerated trainers, in Detroit. Lee learned so much from Steward and his subsequent work as a pundit and trainer has earned him even more respect. He helped to plot Tyson Fury’s masterful knockout of Deontay Wilder last year. Lee and Fury are second cousins from the travelling community but they are a study in contrast, the trainer quietly-spoken and erudite.
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